Here's a blueprint to how i played on my last large map, settings abundant all , tough, 4 opponents.

1. Set spending to 100%

2. Left social/military/research at 33% (maybe not optimal)

3. Bought a factory, started working on next factory and a newly designed colony ship (one equipped with only engines.) Continue buying factories and colony ships until cash drops to some 200 or so .

4. Consulted mini map, I was on the middle lower left, while the other opponents were ranged mostly on the right . Th Toran were the closest. Colony rush was clear, to fill up the left portion of the map. Sent first colony ships 'blindly' towards furtherest range. the next one leap frogged the prior one... Also pick up nearby colonies if they are high quality enough. Ignored the couple of star systems on the extreme left, these are low priority targets until the AI starts to send scouts there.

5. Started researching up to ion drives, redesign when necessary. Next research cheap but useful tech that add bonuses to military/social production.

6. Initally, the main source of colony ships was the homeworld. But as the empire expands, this becomes inefficient, look for colonies on the expanding edge of the empire which have bonus tiles and/or production bonuses due to moral choices as the next source of colony ships.

7. Ship building Colonies on the interior can be used to build ships to colony, lower prority targets within the empire and/or claim resources.

8. Take note of the scouts from the AI . Areas that are scouted, should have priority to be colonised, because the Ai will soon send colony ships in. If this area is within your influence, you can either deny the AI by colonising them first , or if the planets are really low PQ, let them in, and watch them get flipped by influence.

9. #8 applies to resources too. I would assign greater priority to grabbing resources within the enemy influence..... then those within yours....

Works like a charm on tough.... got slightly less then 50% of the map....

a question here, I'm doing the demo atm, but will get the game in a few weeks for my B-Day, so it doesn't hurt to pick up a few strategies now. my question is, when I start, since you don't want to use the core ships, should I buld colony ships with one or two colony modules?

Definitely one. the idea of a colony rush is that You are trying to stake your terrority , so sending 500 or 1000 has the same result. In fact, you might even send a colony ship with 1 unit at first, if you just want to use it for none-tax generating reasons, anyone tried that? After all a planet with 1 million people do as much research/manufuturing as one with a billion.

The core design is slapped on with life support, you can replace it with another engine to increase speed, at the cost of range. If you colonise in the right order, the extra range isn't significant. I personally find that there is little point in long range ships, if their speed is so low, they take forever to reach the limit of their ranges.

Still, if you are playing settings where stars are clustered and habitable planets, stars are not abundant, long range colonies become more useful

Some races also start with advanced technologies like ion drives, so you can quickly design much faster colony ships right off the bat.